


just like a dream

by tkethecrown



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Hosie Endgame, Soulmates, dreams and dreams and dreams, slowburn, soul-swapping spells
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27609122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkethecrown/pseuds/tkethecrown
Summary: Josie’s thirteen when a boy she likes asks Lizzie out.Three weeks later, she meets Hope Mikaelson.For the first time.(For the seventy-fourth time.)
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson & Josie Saltzman, Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 17
Kudos: 133





	1. Chapter 1

Josie first dreamt of the girl with red hair and blue eyes when she was five. 

Lizzie had accidentally blown up the couch that day, and Mom and Dad had fought about it in hushed voices. The school hadn’t been open yet, but they’d already moved into the Salvatore Mansion. Josie had fallen asleep too late, and the new room and the new bed still felt strange. It wasn’t their house, it never would feel like home again and somehow Lizzie had blasted a hole in the one thing that they had brought from their first house, their real house. 

Her dream, though, had made her forget about all of that. She sees the girl, curls bouncing, playing with an older boy on a beach. The waves crash against the shore as the pair race to construct their castle. Josie’s pulled out of the dream just as the girl raises her head to smile at her, her front tooth missing and a hand thrown out to block the wave from destroying her palace. 

Josie sees her again when she’s eight. She had built a fort with Lizzie in the middle of their room, and they’d fallen asleep sprawled out across mountains of pillows and blankets. The girl watches her with undisguised amusement on her face. “It’s a bit crooked,” she says, before disappearing with a twirl of her floral dress. 

After that, she keeps appearing. It’s mostly flickers, moments, snapshots of a different life. The girl bent over books, laughing with friends, standing with her arms crossed, defiant. She carries around a stuffed cheetah, tells Josie the cheetah’s name is Nyx and she was supposed to be black like a panther, but she’s the most special cheetah to ever exist.

When Josie’s eleven, she falls asleep in the library after a particularly long day and wakes up on the beach from the first dream. The girl’s there, much closer than normal, staring out at the waves. She smiles when she sees Josie. “This is my favorite place,” she says, “there’s something magical about the ocean, don’t ya think?”

“Yes,” Josie stutters out, and before she can ask all the questions on the tip of her tongue, her Dad is shaking her awake. 

Josie’s twelve when she sees her again, trailing after her older boy with a younger boy following her. Like they’re her pack. She’s dancing, confident steps and grace as she flings her arms out, traipsing over the grass of her family’s home, running toward the woods with her laughter trailing after her. Her skin sparkles in the sunlight and Josie thinks she’s never seen blue eyes shine so brightly. 

Josie’s thirteen when a boy she likes asks Lizzie out. 

Three weeks later, she meets Hope Mikaelson.

For the first time. 

(For the seventy-fourth time.) 

“Do not embarrass me,” Lizzie instructs, pinning the school crest onto her blazer, “with Hope. We need to make exactly the right kind of impression. Her family is basically royalty, Josie.”

“We’re thirteen, Lizzie. It's middle school, not Game of Thrones,” Josie throws back, but she smoothes her skirt out nonetheless. “Didn’t Mom and Dad say that her family is in New Orleans? Why is she here?”

“Why is the sky blue, Jo? I don’t know. Just be cool!” 

“I’m cooler than you.” 

Josie rolls her eyes, follows Lizzie down the stairs anyway. She adjusts her yellow tie and her navy blue blazer, eyes downcast. She sees her feet first, then legs, then a black plaid skirt, white collared shirt with ruffles, and finally a black blazer.

And then she meets her eyes. 

Blue, like a hundred oceans, and incredibly familiar. Josie has definitely seen this girl before. 

Hope Mikaelson is the girl from her dreams.

There’s a tug on her arm and she realizes that she stopped walking. “I said be cool,” Lizzie hisses. Josie schools her face into what she hopes is a friendly, nice calm-person expression. 

Hope smiles and it’s warm when it’s directed at her and wary when it’s directed at Lizzie. Josie can’t very well say “Hi, you’ve been in my dreams since I was five years old. Are you an angel?” 

No, Josie just waves and blushes crimson and stumbles over her name and that was it. 

And then Hope says that her name is “Hope Andrea Mikaelson,” as if all three words were of equal importance. And they were, to Josie at least. 

She barely manages more than a word or two, let’s Lizzie do all the talking. When Hope’s parents whisk her away after what seems like only minutes, she can’t help but feel a pang of regret. Hope looks back at her, flanked by her mother and father and grins. 

Hope doesn’t come to the school until she’s older. Until they’re both older. Josie’s fifteen and it’s the first day of her sophomore year when she sees her again. It’s always Hope’s hair that she notices first. Even in her dreams. Especially in her dreams. 

She’s dreamt of her again, hundreds of times in the intervening two years and it’s always subtle glances and smiles that could light up a room. Hope drags her hands down an aisle in a library or to her favorite piece of art when they’re in a museum one time. Or she puts her fingers to Josie’s lips to shush her when they’re sneaking into Hope’s father’s office to look at his collection of medieval books and weapons. 

She doesn’t know if it’s real, doesn’t dare imagine it is, doesn’t want to imagine it’s not. 

The world around them explodes and implodes, fights and conflict Josie hears about in quiet whispers. Her Mom is constantly absent and Lizzie hates that. So, the shared dreams with Hope, or maybe they’re just a figment of Josie’s imagination, become her solace. There are whispers of the Mikaelsons sometimes, about whatever they’re up to, and Josie listens more attentively than she’d ever admit. She can’t help it. 

She’s not sure if she’ll ever see Hope again, outside of her dreams, but then it’s the first day of sophomore year and Hope is there and she’s quiet and reserved, but her intelligence shines through in class.

She nearly has a heart attack when she first sees Hope in class, lingers in the doorway and wonders why no one had warned her about this. Well, why would they? Hope is just another new student. 

Josie finds out that she has four classes with Hope, who’s a year older, but Josie was always taking advanced classes if she could help it. Hope debates the professor, giving him a piece of her mind, and Josie’s attention is rapt, focused on her because she’s _so_ much more than Josie had ever seen in her dream world. 

Josie stays a bit after class, delaying grabbing her books and securing her backpack as she watches Hope talk to the professor yet again. She turns to leave quickly, her nerves getting the better of her, and runs straight into another student who flees the scene as Josie’s books fly everywhere. 

“Here, let me,” a voice says and Josie glances up, curtains of brown hair framing her face as Hope kneels in front of her. _Breathe, Jo. Just breathe_. But she can’t breathe because Hope’s perfume is wafting around her and she inhales it, smelling only Hope as the other girl places Josie’s books into a neat pile while Josie watches silently. Hope smells like vanilla and the woods and citrus. 

She finds her voice to stutter out a “thanks,” barely audible and Hope grins before rising, dusting her hands off of her skirt. 

“See you around, Jo,” Hope says, over her shoulder with a smile and a wink.


	2. Chapter 2

The nickname spreads across Josie’s mind and then snaps into place because Hope couldn’t, shouldn’t know that name. Sure, she had called Josie ‘Jo’ thousands of times in her dreams, always with a giggle, it was a secret that they shared with each other. But the way that Hope says it now, not in her dreamworld, makes Josie pause. Because, those dreams couldn’t be two-way, right? That’s not possible, even with magic. And what magic was she conjuring in her sleep that Hope could tap into? 

Josie nearly runs to the dining hall, dropping next to Lizzie with a huff. 

“She’s horrendous,” Lizzie observes, as Josie glances up to see Hope holding court with a group of witches. 

“She’s not  —  she isn’t  _ bad,  _ Lizzie. You just hate that she’s the all-powerful tribrid.” Josie grabs the salad that Lizzie had been stabbing and quickly steals away the fork to shove a piece of parmesan and tomato in her mouth.

“Exactly, she’s a fucking show off.” Lizzie doesn’t even seem to register that Josie stole her lunch as she grabs her water, drinking it quickly and clenching the plastic bottle in her hands. 

“She’s a girl, Lizzie. Just like you and me.” 

Lizzie focuses on her with a glare. “What is this thing you have with her?”

Josie rolls her eyes. “I’m just asking you to be nice to her. She’s new here.” Josie chews slowly, watching Hope smile at the crowd of girls around her. She pushes the salad away, jealousy coursing through her stomach, through her veins and making her nearly sick. 

“She’s encroaching on our territory and our friends. The coven is ours.” 

“It’s really not, Lizzie. If anything, the coven is Penelope’s.” Josie laughs lightly, eyes alighting to the opposite side of the room to Penelope Park, perched on the edge of a table with a smoothie in her hand looking totally unbothered with everything, a bored expression on her face. “And she couldn’t give a shit.” 

“That bitch.” 

“Lizzie!” 

“I don’t trust her, Jo. Or Hope.” 

_ I do,  _ Josie says to herself.  _ I know her better than I know myself because I’ve seen her life. I’ve seen her grow up and I’ve seen her laugh and I’ve seen her smile. _

“Are you really that bothered by her? It’s not...jealousy? A crush?” Josie teases, if only to get the feelings of butterflies out of her stomach when she thinks of Hope’s blue eyes and shining smile. 

Lizzie grimaces. “No thanks.”

Josie shakes her head and feels a pang of relief she can’t explain. Nor does she want to think about it. “Just be nice to her, please. For me.”

“You act like we’re friends just because our parents know her parents, but she’s never been friendly to us, Jo.” 

Josie stays silent, watching Hope. Because the truth was that Hope was her friend. Probably her best friend, apart from Lizzie. 

The next day in Magical Charms and Spells, Dorian has them split into pairs, with each pair determined by a tiny piece of paper that he handed out to the class before they got there, placed on the desk in front of them. 

“Alright, your job for the rest of the semester is to work on a project with your partner. I want you to research any spell you’d like but you have to do three things for me  — you have to write a ten-page paper  _ together _ , present to the class for no less than 10 minutes on your topic, and then you both have to perform the spell and try not to blow us up this time, Colin.” A boy in the back of the class groans and yells out, “sorry, Professor!” because everyone remembered the time that he had accidentally set off a small explosion in the classroom when he had been trying to perform a simple summoning spell. 

Josie opens up the folded paper and sees the number  _ 11 _ on the parchment. She glances around the classroom, holding up the paper in front of her like those people who had signs at airports. An agonizing few minutes later, Hope approaches her, which is somehow almost as mortifying as dropping her books yesterday. 

“You’re number 11 too?” she asks, the smile evident in her question as her lips quirked upwards. 

“I  — uh, yeah — I think so,” Josie says, looking at her paper again. Of course, she was number 11 too, she knew this, Hope knew this, Dorian knew this. Her head and her mouth clearly don’t as she stumbles over the words. 

“Cool. Well,  _ partner _ , want to meet up in the library later to plan out our project?” Hope smiles and its light and she takes a step forward toward Josie, who leans in, conscious of Hope’s stupid perfume and the smell of her shampoo and the way her v-neck was dipping low over her collarbones. Josie feels her gaze dip  — 

“Yeah, the library sounds good,” Josie nearly grunts out, eyes snapping back to Hope’s. Hope watches her for a moment before spinning back around to take her seat on the other side of the classroom. Josie lets out a breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding as Dorian gets everyone’s attention once more. 

“Alright, with the team projects sorted, let’s dive into Message Spells and how to transcend long distances and astral planes...” 

Josie isn’t sure how she makes it through lunch and two more classes because her mind was just a mantra of  _ Hope, library, Hope, library, group project, Hope.  _

She nearly trips over her own feet as she approaches Hope, who was seated alone in a corner of the library, a table between two worn leather armchairs. Josie smiles shyly at Hope as she approaches, dropping her backpack next to the free chair and pulling out a notebook, dropping her pile onto the table. She’s very conscious of Hope leaning forward, a mischievous look in her eyes that could only mean trouble. Had only meant trouble when they were younger. It’s the same expression she wore when she was up to no good. Josie loved that look. 

“Hey, Jo. So, I was thinking, and you can stop me if this is getting too far ahead, but I was reading through the book and I think we should do a soul-swapping spell? Bonus points for difficulty and who knows, maybe it would be fun to see into each other’s minds if we’re gonna be working together so closely? What do you think?” Hope was excited, radiant like this and all Josie could do was nod as dread descended into her stomach. 

Hope in her head, in her body, seeing all of the years of dreams that she’s had about her. Shit, Josie was screwed. 

But Hope’s looking at her with a smile on her face, obviously excited by this idea, and Josie absolutely doesn’t want to say no to her. 


End file.
